Description

Ann Xu’s grandmother passed away in China when Ann was a child in the United States. In Same Place Same Time, Ann reflects on growing up without her grandmother, mourning for a family member she never knew. The final English page of the comic asks, “what if we lived in the same place at the same time?”

Then in a clever use of the split-comic format and two-color Risograph printing, the reader is supposed to turn to the back cover of the comic, and read the second half comic right to left in Chinese [with a Chinese-to-English translation card]. In this second comic, Ann answers her question, and imagines a world in which she and her grandmother live in the same place, and are able to share experiences and memories.

Same Place Same Time is a short, sweet, and emotionally powerful comic about family, the fragility of life, and time’s irreversible nature.